


A Mirror Darkly

by icarus_chained



Category: Brimstone
Genre: Anger, Banter, Domestic, Fallen Angels, Gen, Love/Hate, Prompt Fic, Rage, damnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2597156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I love you. You remind me of me." The Devil and Ezekiel Stone have a more-than-slightly alarming conversation over breakfast one morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mirror Darkly

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt of: "Brimstone, Ezekiel Stone + Lucifer, discussing the Fall and how Zeke's own Fall mirrors it." It's been a while since I've watched the episodes, so probably very questionable. Also? It says a lot about Brimstone that I'm tagging 'domestic' and 'banter' alongside 'rage', 'damnation' and 'love/hate'. They had ... an inimitable relationship, those two -_-;

"Do you know, I've always loved you, Detective."

Zeke paused, a little bit, but only barely, and mostly in exasperation. The Devil, with that suave, impish smile of his, had perched himself on the kitchen counter, his hands wrapped around one raised knee, watching Zeke boil some eggs with every appearance of fascination.

"Really," he answered, shaking his head over the salt and pepper, and checking automatically that that was, in fact, what they still were. It always paid to check, when the master of all petty malices was in residence. "You could have fooled me."

The Devil laughed, bright and easy. "Not difficult," he pointed out, hopping up to snag a cracker and dip his finger into the only perfectly boiled egg Zeke had so far managed. Zeke closed his eyes, and counted carefully to ten.

"Don't you have better things to do than harass me and steal my breakfast?" he asked, but he knew the answer even as he asked it. He never asked in earnest. Not anymore.

" _Ezekiel_ ," the Devil chided, with the wounded expression of a disappointed father. "Of course not. You know I'll always make time for you. You're my favourite, after all. And I do love you."

He said it hand on heart, with a perfect mockery of sincerity, and even still, even after all this time, Zeke couldn't help the rush of rage he felt, the deep and earnest desire to knock the Devil's teeth out. Not his eyes. _That_ anger was still reserved for those darker moments between them. But his teeth, sure. Who didn't want to punch the Prince of Darkness in the face every now and then?

"Ah," said the Devil, watching him, smiling lightly. "Yes. There it is, Ezekiel. That thing I do so love about you. Show it for me, won't you? Let me see it shine."

"... Why?" Zeke said at last, and there was something in it he wasn't sure he'd intended, some glimpse of a honest question under the old exasperation. He frowned at himself, but shrugged and followed through. "Why do you like my anger so much? Mine, specifically. In all the world of angry, hateful people, why me? Why am _I_ your favourite?"

The Devil straightened, an odd little flicker in those eyes through which Hell beckoned, a small flash of something as strange and as earnest in its turn as Zeke's question. A sliver of something dark and old, and brightly bitter.

"... Because it's _righteous_ ," the Devil answered, after a moment. His voice went soft, and dark, and truthful in a way it was not meant to be. Real, and not a mocking sincerity, and a thousand times more deadly for it. "Because it is righteous, Ezekiel, and it is damned, and you have followed it knowingly into the Pit and into my grasp. I watched you do it. I watched you stand firm in your rage and your vengeance, in your anger that even now you call justified, I watched you Fall into the Pit because of it, and I watch it in you now. Even still. I see your anger like a spark inside you, and it warms me to the core. It reminds me, you see. Of the anger in my own heart, that has sustained me all these aeons. Of my wrath and my rage, and my righteous damnation. I watch you, Ezekiel, I _love_ you, because you remind me of me. Nothing more, and nothing less." 

There was a beat of silence, then, while Zeke stood with a pair of cooling eggs in his hands and stared at Devil standing wry and darkly earnest in his kitchen, and the Devil stared calmly back, a shining thing in his eyes that was, really _was_ , something that looked not so far from love.

Then the Devil moved, an inelegant snort of amusement bursting from him, and grabbed one of the soft boiled eggs ( _not_ the one he'd already spoiled) so he could stick a finger inside the yolk and scoop it cheerfully into his mouth.

"What can I say?" the Prince of Darkness said, licking his fingers and shrugging lightly. "Pride goeth, and all that. I'm a sucker for the classics."

Zeke blinked, and shook himself, trying to break loose from the strange stillness in his head. For a second there, he'd felt ... He didn't even know. Sympathetic? Weirdly flattered? Straight-up terrified? All of the above, maybe, and a few other things besides. But hell with that, and literally. Anger was easier, exasperation and frustration and snide despair, and he welcomed them as gladly as ever.

"Okay, first?" he murmured, sitting down at the counter and defiantly eating the remaining fouled egg regardless. "Narcissistic much? Don't go looking in any mirrors for a while, you might never escape. And second, if I remind you so much of yourself, what does it say that you get your kicks torturing me for fun?" He looked up, daring the creature propped beside him. "I'm confused, oh Satan. Do you love yourself or loathe yourself over here?"

Hell yawned open in the Devil's face. For a second, only a second, but it was _there_ , as Zeke had never seen it on the surface before, and his spoon abruptly dropped from nerveless fingers. He froze, still and horrified and desperately trying not to show it, and stared into the terror in the Devil's eyes.

"You know, I'm not sure," the Devil whispered, soft with ancient malice and something else, a pain aeons deep and getting only deeper. Poison dripped from his tongue, and suddenly Zeke wasn't entirely sure if that was meant metaphorically. "Want to stick around and find out, oh mirror of mine?"

"... Can I take a rain-check?" Zeke managed, and for a second felt absurdly proud of himself for how steady it came out, even lightly mocking, when he could barely hear himself over the thunder of his own terror. But he managed, he did manage, and in the face of it the Devil turned on a dime once more, flipped from yawning horror to petty, exasperated malice, and maybe even a touch of pride himself. 

Mercurial, was that the word? Hell. Mercury had _nothing_ on Lucifer.

"Why certainly, Ezekiel," he said, standing upright once more and twitching his cuffs back into place. Zeke eyed him warily, and wasn't in the least ashamed of it. It was justified only a second later, when the Devil rested one warm, fatherly hand on his shoulder, and with it pitched Zeke the hell out of his kitchen and face-first into a brick wall somewhere outdoors and stinking entirely too strongly of sewage. "You have _work_ to do, after all."

... Yeah. And right now, given a choice between wrestling with the damned or keeping one more second of the Devil's company in this mood, Ezekiel was only too happy to do it. If it came to a choice between the hatred of the damned and the Devil's maybe love? He sure as hell knew which one he thought was safer.

Hell. Wouldn't you?


End file.
